Business and Web 2.0: An interactive feature

Explore, track, and customize seven years of survey results on how businesses use social technologies and tools.

November 2013

For the past seven years, thousands of executives from around the world—across a range of industries and functional areas—have responded to a McKinsey survey11.McKinsey Publishing conducted the most recent survey online in June 2013 and received 2,609 responses from executives across industries, regions, and functional specialties. The survey received 3,542 responses in 2012, 4,261 responses in 2011, 3,249 responses in 2010, 1,695 responses in 2009, 1,988 responses in 2008, and 2,847 responses in 2007. The “purpose” results were calculated based on all respondents who were using any social (or Web 2.0) technology for the particular purpose indicated (for example, lowering purchasing costs). Each percentage represents the proportion of these respondents who are using a particular technology for a particular purpose and offers a useful way of comparing the relative importance of each technology.
on how organizations are using social (or Web 2.0) technologies. In 2009 we created an interactive tool that links the data from these survey results and charts it to the emerging trends in Web 2.0 adoption.

This interactive focuses on several of the survey’s core questions—from what technologies and tools companies view as most important to what kind of investments, if any, organizations plan to make in Web 2.0 in the future. Our most recent survey examines the business use of 13 social technologies and tools: blogs, collaborative document editing, mash-ups (a Web application that combines multiple sources of data into a single tool), microblogging, online videoconferencing, podcasts, prediction markets, rating, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), social networking, tagging, video sharing, and wikis.

Using the interactive, you can track the performance of each technology through the years or customize the view to compare particular technologies side by side. The interactive also contains an audio guide from Michael Chui—a McKinsey principal and one of the drivers of the Web 2.0 research initiative—who takes you further inside the results and trends.

This interactive archive will evolve from year to year as the survey progresses and as businesses continue to evaluate their use of and satisfaction with Web 2.0.

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